For people that don’t follow the YouTube community, YT has a terrible track record of not treating creators equally, and demonetizing a ton of creators for little to no reason, while some of their other creators, namely Jake and Logan Paul could violate these same guidelines that the rest were slapped over the wrist with.
This has been a long time under way, and while I don’t particularly think they should drop shows like they stupidly did with Pewdiepie, there definitely had to be some backlash for posting a video of a dead guy, when they were striking against videoes talking about that video, for being in violation.
It’s also worth noting, that YouTube were not the ones taking down the video, Logan did this himself after the backlash, and that they waited so long is rather indicative of them trying to see where the wind blows and if they could get away with it.
Honestly, YT has been writing the book on “how to shit on your creators” for 2017 and more, but they might finally be setting back on a better track.
Downvote me to coach, but I've never understood why people assert that Youtube owes their users advertising dollars, where other social media platforms are exempt.
Youtube has for years run at a loss, providing free high-quality video streaming with no bandwidth restrictions. These "creators", who are actually a very tiny portion of users, pay zero overheads to have a worldwide broadcasting platform where they're unrestricted to promote third-party products and monetise their content in countless ways.
If people are going to complain about Youtube, then surely you've got to go after other social networks first who aren't sharing revenue with users who are bringing engagement to their platform (Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, etc).
People are scared. A few companies have the power to censor and promote what we see and do not see. This is a tremendous power and we all want the companies entrusted with this power to do so morally and consistently. Pointing out that other social networks are behaving badly as well does not address the fear that people feel.
One gets the sense that many people working at places like YouTube really are living in a bubble and are totally oblivious to the intensity of the fear that people feel about their power to censor and promote. I sincerely hope that this changes. It would be horrible for everyone if government had to step in to regulate this medium.
Sharing ad revenue has probably made a net profit for them. My guess is that the ad revenue incentivizes users to create compelling (and unfortunately sometimes controversial) at a far greater rate then it would if it were not sharing revenue.
They are essentially paying for "quality" content the same way Netflix and HBO do only they have a brilliant model because they only have to pay if the video is successful. Whereas Netflix, HBO, and the like need to pay even if the show is a flop.
If anything, they should be investing seed money into professional (Hollywood type) content creators. I'm sure they already are.
YouTube has competition now. Twitch, owned by Amazon, splits advertising revenue with their content creators, as well as direct audience contributions through paid channel subscriptions.
I believe Facebook also offers monetization for video, along with paying certain publishers/influencers directly to use their livestreaming tech.
The issue is not whether people can make money off of YT or not, but if they have an equal chance to do so. As GP mentioned there have been blatant inequalities regarding which rules are applied to whom in 2017 (for example the popular channel 'h3h3productions' now barely publishes any videos anymore).
Exactly! I can't remember if h3h3productions also takes Patreon, but either that or moving over to Twitch seems the common response from the people hit the hardest (while h3h3 don't upload many videos, they are quite active with their podcast!).
Perhaps YouTube should 'demonitize' all content creators and just take the ad dollars for themselves.
I think I'd prefer that as it might skew YouTube back to its origins of "here's a cool video I want to share" instead of the current trend of "here's a video I made for the purpose of making money"
We are seeing the rediscovery of the network monopoly business model in these online giants like YouTube, only without the former safeguards of production contracts that television and film have developed. It's no different than the "uberization" of the rest of our economy over the past 10 years. All of the marginal costs and inefficiencies involved with running a business have been externalized to the employees and customers of that business because there is no other option for them. Those in control of the distribution will always have final say. Only now they have the power to make arbitrary rulings with zero means of recourse by those affected, short of mass organization.
I don't know who's to blame. But somewhere along the line we let people's outrage have more control than it probably should.
I don't know who Logan is but read what he did. It was disgusting. But the market should have naturally handled it. The problem is had YouTube done nothing it likely would not have affected his views. That should tell you something about how loud and powerful we have let the offended become.
I think there is a second problem that actually might be bigger. Intolerance for mistakes.
I did not see the video in question but I know that humans can often loose judgment and make mistakes. I think it is going to make shitty society to live in if you will be judged in perpetually for the worst moments of your public life.
There are talks about him breaking YouTube rules. That is fine. He should be punished within those guidelines. But it seems people want blood.
> But the market should have naturally handled it.
It did. Advertisers don't want to be associated with such content and made it clear to Youtube they want a sanitized landscape to advertise on. Youtube in response has cut Paul off from the Guaranteed Revenue Stream for now. The business partners involved in this situation spoke a long time ago on what they did and did not want, and Youtube made a business decision.
From the article, the viewers who think what Paul did was deplorable are calling out for more punishment, which Youtube has not done, so they are in-fact resisting the will of the masses here.
> I think there is a second problem that actually might be bigger. Intolerance for mistakes.
I do get what you're saying, but per the article and per Logan Paul's history with his videos and audience, his fame comes from constantly pushing the envelope with outlandish behavior. It's part of his character and also what attracts people to him, but it should be expected that he also sets his own limits and boundaries. There's not really a way in light of his popularity and work with Youtube that he could have not known about the policy on such video content, and even if he did, ignorance is not an excuse in this case.
Logan Paul is receiving a penalty for bad judgement and violating Youtube rules; he's not the victim of mob mentality, he's the victim of Advertisers wanting a sanitized advertising platform. If he made a mistake in earnest, then I hope he learns well from it and grows as a video maker, using this as a learning experience from which he recovers. Nothing Youtube has said so far though has made it out to be that this is some irreparable situation, it's a penalty for violating the Youtube Guidelines.
> Logan Paul is receiving a penalty for bad judgement and violating Youtube rules; he's not the victim of mob mentality,
He's receiving punishment because of the mob mentality. The platform had the video in question on their highly curated Trending page before he pulled it.
Whether some accountability was necessary is secondary to the fact that he is now in the sights of a huge morally righteous outrage mob. And I'm with the OP that it seems like society runs in a mode now where mob retribution is not satisfied until it the retribution is absolute.
Exactly, so much overreacting to something you can simply choose not to watch.
People getting so offended someone put a video up, they will call the advertisers and complain about how their add is showing in a offensive video.
And then there is the punishment, it never is enough. The person must be completely destroyed. I think that happens because in the angry mob every one wants retribution for themselves.
(for example, you murder someone. You get arrested and go to court. There you get sentenced 5 years for each relative and friend the victim had, instead of getting the sentence for murder)
> People getting so offended someone put a video up, they will call the advertisers and complain about how their add is showing in a offensive video.
But this is capitalism.
Bob can say what he likes, but I don't have to pay him to say it.
If the money I spend buying products is then given to Bob in advertising I'm free to chose a company who doesn't advertise with Bob. And when I tell those companies why I no longer buy their products I'm using freedom of speech - the same freedom of speech that Bob claims to care so much about.
> He's receiving punishment because of the mob mentality.
I'm afraid history doesn't really agree with you - the entire "Adpocalypse" was advertiser driven, not user driven. Users had been complaining about horrible videos on Youtube for years and the videos continued to be monetized and Youtube didn't care. Ad revenue and results were not trending down, Advertisers just wanted more control, and Youtube gave it to them.
And I take issue with the idea of the Trending Page being highly curated because it's clearly algorithmic, not manually managed. The countless videos on the subject, as well as Quora discussions strongly suggest that it's decided by algorithm, not by individuals.
I get that you're frustrated with how people respond to certain topics in modern society, but the action from Youtube is pretty even handed by any metric. Logan Paul is _not_ banned from Youtube, he's not banned from monetizing, he's simply been removed from a specific level of partnership in Youtube for violating a rule that Youtube has had for a long time and for going against Advertiser wishes. Again, he should know better - he's made a mistake, he's receiving a punishment. If he is contrite, he will recover; he seems to have what it takes to be successful on Youtube. This time he just went too far.
The Adpocalypse was driven by activist journalists at the Wall Street Journal and other outlets, who contacted brands to tell them they were writing a scandal story before they even published it. The outrage was not organic, but driven by established media organizations also reliant on the same advertising revenue.
What I find strange is, there isn't any evidence for long term association of an ad with the content of the video. If you see a coca cola commercial before an ISIS beheading video, do you really think "Huh, coca cola is sponsoring ISIS now"? It is a ridiculous jump to leap to. The research also doesn't back it up, there seems to be a short term association, but definitely nothing long term.
The problem is YouTube doesn't want to operate at a loss, they are trying to get more advertisers to the platform so they can make more money. To bring more advertisers to the platform, they are attempting to get advertisers to pick and choose what kind of content their ads show around. Instead of just allowing them to target the user and whatever demographics/interests they may have based on their viewing history.
I find it really strange for a company hemorrhaging money to actively be showing fewer ads, considering they make money on those ads as well.
The users causing a fuss were simply leverage for the ad companies to remind YouTube who is boss. For some reason YouTube thinks they don't have any kind of leverage of their own. Of course they aren't profitable, but they also have a massive user base. It seems like a strategic mistake to me.
They are pushing content creators off the platform, which will push down their user count and push down the amount of people they can advertise to. I'm not a business or marketing guy, but I would have simply said "We try to remove videos that violate our TOS as quickly as possible, all other videos the creators want to make money from, we show ads on. Our ads are targeted to users, not based on the specific video they happen to be watching."
That makes sense. Apparently there are videos that they just can't take down with their TOS, but that they want advertisers to have the option not to advertise there.
Its a service that sells less advertisements and makes creators shift away from youtube.
A lose lose lose situation in the long run.
Also seeing youtube as the future of tv... I don't think so.
Yes, they have a "demonetized" status for videos that don't violate their TOS but aren't "advertiser friendly". Their general lack of transparency about it is also quite annoying. There also does seem to be some kind of manual process going on which is very strange. I have a small anecdote about it, unfortunately the creator took down the video talking about it after the problem was resolved or I'd just link that. I'll try to summarize as best I can.
There is a channel I watch, called "Counter Arguments", it is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. He made a video a while back called "Punch a Nazi"[0]. Some weeks after it being up, he got it taken down as violating the TOS for promoting violence. I don't believe he actually attempted to get it reviewed and put back up. The funny thing about the video is it is a video that is ultimately against political violence and he puts clips from a couple other videos in it that actually do promote violence. Those videos were never taken down. He posted a video about what happened to the video because people were asking him about it. A few days after posting the video about it, the video was put back up. I believe it may be demonetized, but I'm not sure. He seems to have scrubbed the videos discussing it from his channel.
We have no way of knowing if it was a manual or automated action that caused the video to go down, nor if it was a manual or automated action to get it put back up. The timing of it, sounds to me like it may have been flagged, a YouTube employee looked at it and didn't like what it said, so took it down. Potentially another YouTube employee saw the other video about it being taken down and put it back up. We have no way of knowing. I think if he would have never made another video about it being taken down, it likely would still be down today.
I feel like my first point still stands. It does not matter that the advertisers pulled, it matters why they pulled. If it was not based on actual business impact but the threatening offended then it is a problem. Unfortunately the only way for them to know would to have not pulled.
Also I don't see how YouTube RED dropping him has your do with advertisers. He still has a channel right ? He still is able to make new videos ?
But you bring up a real good topic. You claim the advertisers want a sanitized platform. Does it not bother you that these people have basically hijacked YouTube and have any say in the content you get to view ?
Also I am not really trying to defend this guy. I am mostly questioning how what is often a vocal offended outraged minority of people seem to have more power than they should.
So if YouTube or an advertiser made any decisions not directly off raw numbers then it bothers me. If the market -- that means views -- goes down because people cared enough to stop watching then it is a win win. Advertisers won't pay because of less views.
My argument is based on the notion that YouTube stands to loose more by penalizing him, the same goes for advertisers in lost impressions.
> Unfortunately the only way for them to know would to have not pulled.
Well, I think the video popularity even before hand is proof enough that the mob still liked it. People still flocked to Paul's channel, and probably will continue to do so. IIRC, he even saw an uptick in subscribers, but that may be a mistake on my part. The part I take issue with mostly is people saying that overly sensitive people got it taken down, when really it's just that overly anal Advertisers worried about the effect on their investment and brand image. That's a business decision which I'm sure is backed by pretty cold hard numbers.
> Does it not bother you that these people have basically hijacked YouTube and have any say in the content you get to view ?
As I try not to use Youtube at all, no, not really. Like, fundamentally I agree with you that pervasive Advertising is bad for society as a whole, but what happens to Youtube isn't really my concern, as Youtube/Google demonstrated long ago where their loyalties were, and I made peace with that. My response is not to say I approve of Advertisers having this much control - I think it's ridiculous. But my response is to empower the few artists I like using other funding means and to avoid Youtube. The loss of one viewer hopefully is off-set by the $5 a month.
> YouTube stands to loose more by penalizing him, the same goes for advertisers in lost impressions.
Well, I would have to imagine that based on the drama around the Adpocalypse and that Youtube has doubled-down on it instead of walking it back, Youtube and Advertisers are in agreement that the changes have been for the better, not for the worse.
It's late and I am sick so my reply will be short. Not for lack of words or things to say. Just might sleep better knowing you had a chance to see this.
I did not mean to imply you approve with advertisers having this sort of control. It was a question of inquiry on a topic that I had not thought much about. Something we have more common ground on apparently.
I think we do agree on a lot with regards to advertisers. In this instance, we disagree on the impetus for YouTube to punish Logan Paul, but effectively dislike the situation in general. I think that YouTube failed to be what it should, and a Logan Paul style account is symptomatic of the problems of YouTube, but that's unrelated.
But youtube is the market. YouTube is a private enterprise that's declining to continue their business relationship with him. That's market forces in action.
Adding to this, his show is similar to the MTV format "Jackass" modeled around shock value. So I believe the market would have actually encouraged and rewarded such behavior.
Sounds like you don't agree on who participates in a market. It's not the audience. An easy rule of thumb: the demand side of a market is the side that pays the money.
Ads flow from Advertisers to Audience, content from Creators to Audience, Cash from Audience to Advertisers, and Cash from Advertisers to YT and Creators.
Correct. Without intention to politicize this, that is the main reason why @realDonaldTrup still exists. Eyeballs, Traffic, Usage. All lead to ad revenue for Twitter and Google/Youtube in the first example.
There are many markets. And YouTube is part of a larger market that you ate talking about. However, I think he is talking about the market that makes up the viewers of YT content which I think is a might be a better market to look at since it is closer to the infraction. However, I think YT is well within reason to axe the guy. They are similar to a channel getting rid of a talk show host in this instance.
> I think it is going to make shitty society to live in if you will be judged in perpetually for the worst moments of your public life.
Not perpetually, but the crew needs a reality check. He treated the streets of Japan like his own theme park. He repeatedly disrespected its people. He also recorded, edited and posted his childish reaction to the hanging corpse of a man. Making that vlog took several hours and was reviewed by multiple people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vtpEwGgdf4
There's loose judgement and making mistakes; and there's filming the corpse of someone who has committed suicide and making jokes about it, then somehow deciding that it's a good idea to put it online.
The market doesn't handle morality. Especially in this kind of case, he was more likely to get views from the outrage, even just from people disgusted in him.
There are cases where yes, I think that maybe the voice of the offended gets magnified too much. But trivialising suicide to millions of (mostly quite young) people and in such a crass and uncouth manner is not one of those cases.
You can see some of the extremes of this public shaming culture in S Korea[1]. Not sure if it's gotten better or worse. I think it's also prevalent in S Africa.
Who exactly is in this role of deciding how loud and powerful people can be? At what point does a person get bucketed into the category of "the offended"? Clearly you think his actions were disgusting, yet you speak as if you're in a position of superiority over these people. I wonder where that line is drawn.
People don't want to support this stuff, or buy products associated with it. That's a show-stopper for this business model.
The market did handle it, there was enough bad press for YouTube so that it was no longer a good business decision to continue their partnership with Paul.
I think that depends on how you define "market". Is it the viewers, the concerned culture watchdogs who obviously speak for everyone, one gigantic internet medium with outsized influence?
Should viewers have decided whether or not Weinstein should still be producing movies? There’s clearly a point where the press around someone becomes too toxic to have a close business relationship with them.
You know, I don't like the guy. Because I don't like the guy, I like that the mob contributed to his fall.
But, to answer your question, I don't have an answer. Do I not listen to music because the musicians are not my politics, or do I not read an author because they have horrible views or they belong to the Church of Scientology? When I look at it from that prism, I'm not sure.
Then there is the irony of Hollywood, the most misogynistic and misandristic, sexist, exploitative group of people lecturing the rest of the country on what proper conduct is.
Well if you’re not aware of an artists politics you can easily find yourself consuming propaganda. It’d be foolish not to exercise any restraint in that regard.
Sometimes we have to learn to enjoy things as they are without thinking about the meta context. I think Reagan, like him or loathe him, you know, liked Springsteen's "Born in the USA", despite it being a protest song.
Beside, propaganda is not in and of itself bad. Maybe propaganda has made me more of a conservationist or environmentalist. Should I have disregarded those readings because of the inherent propaganda?
Yes. There is an unstated assumption that giving in to a screeching outrage machine is somehow "better for business" than standing up for free expression (even if that expression is offensive).
That assumption is...unwarranted. The actual percentage of neopuritan busybodies (from whatever political perspective they claim to be from) is significantly lower than an estimate based on volume would lead you to believe.
should i be surprised that the first few comments are somehow defending logan paul in some way?
are we so desensitized that we just kinda shrug our shoulders when someone posts a video of a dead guy? what about if a large portion of his audience is kids?
"but wow his viewcount!" i mean what about that warlord that murdered and maimed a whole bunch of innocent people. he was bad but the efficiency in which he did it took my breath away!
logan paul posts a lot of dumb, sometimes racist, mostly shit videos that manipulates kids into buying their "merch" and while i'm sure someone like this has existed for every single generation, the fact that no one is there to ask him whether doing this kind of shit is beneficial besides "for the views!" i mean it wouldn't be so bad if logan or his brother were actually mentally sound enough to make just the baseline level of common decency.
maybe i am just too old, but the ability to influence so many kids at once scares me.
I'm shrugging it off like a papercut. It's not good, I don't like it, and I don't want it to happen again but I'm not going to waste more than a few seconds on it.
Honestly, what surprises and worries me are the number of people acting like they lost an arm..
YT makes money off these people for virtually pennies on the dollar. They could be more vested in their content creators, they could treat all their creators equally (rather than selectively). They could do so much more to be even handed and create expectation and you know, provide some guidance. No, that costs money.
So the easy way out of all that costly messiness is cut that cheap troublemaking "talent" at the drop of a tweet because you know you have a firehose of more creators waiting.
There's a difference between talking to children about death (e.g. Mr Hooper on Sesame Street), and a video where a dude goes looking for people that committed suicide, succeeds in finding a corpse, and jokes about it in front of someone's body.
People commit suicide.. thats a part of life (People in my imediate family have committed suicide). Its horrible, but its a part of life. Joking about it, is a copeing mechanism, perhaps not the very best one.
I havent watched the video in question, Im sure its propably in bad taste, but you dont have to watch it. Nobody HAS to watch it.
No one has to watch it, but when the primary audience of the channel is children there's something not right about treating a recently deceased corpse like a sideshow exhibit. Suicides can come in clusters and behave almost like an infectious disease (I'm sorry if you've experienced this firsthand). It's perhaps not that surprising to see that people are more likely to commit suicide after a relative or friend does. Even media coverage of a stranger's suicide can cause an uptick in suicide rates. While Logan Paul may not have any obligation to handle the subject in a respectful way, Youtube also doesn't have any obligation to give preferential treatment to his shitty videos.
Well, now that YT is all grown up, they are learning the value of having producers, or generally people who can nix something before it hits the "airwaves" -as well as take the "heat".
So, yeah, maybe for your premier channels, you don't have live streamers without a net.
On the other hand, it's a bit ridiculous to crucify this guy or that Swedish guy when they have thousands of worse , much worse offenders around the globe. But hey, outrage of the day. I mean, I'm shocked, shocked they want to run lean as possible (on oversight, etc.) and cut loose the "ta[l|r]ento[1]" at first sign of trouble.
And, if you head down to Lawson's konbini, you can buy the "101 ways to kill yourself without leaving a mess for your family" polite suicide book.
[1] And by ta[l|r]ento I mean that in the most Japanese way because YT see their creators only as cheap conduits to monetization and only care about them insofar as they create revenue for them.
If you ever look into the reason Pewdiepie got affected, it’s a massively disgusting play of how massive media outlets can twist a narrative by editing videos out of context together and put pressure on a platform to respond to a blatantly (at least it’s a 20 sec google away) false narrative.
Not that I'm aware of [but not certain]. That said, you can see this points to their concern. It's not the content that _really_ offends them. Rather, it's the offense to their pocketbook.
I thought he was just one of those examples of someone finding the shortest path to tweens' dopamine receptors, particularly in the absence of any broadcast standards of quality.
Being disrespectful, while supremely offensive to me and a very good reason not to watch Logan Paul (or let your kids watch him), does not meet my personal bar of "should be banned". Mainstream media routinely gives the mic to people acting far more offensively, and with actual malicious intent rather than mere youthful stupidity.
Free speech is not something that private companies need to protect as far as the law goes, but I think it's an ideal that they should try to hold dear nonetheless, as much as possible. "Acted disrespectfully towards a group" is way too wiggly and subjective as an offense to start banning people over.
Edit: just to be clear, I think the suicide video is clearly over the line. I'm only talking about his general shithead-ness the rest of the time.
I don't agree with GP that he should be banned, but it seems like a perfectly fine decision for YT to remove him from premium advertising. Not just for optics reasons, but because there's nothing wrong with a company taking a stance on crass and offensive (to some people) content.
I'm a somewhat admirer of Japanese culture. I don't agree with that. Yet, I wonder, would you be in support of banning all people who disrespect American people or American culture? I think if you do want to also ban them, while sympathetic, I would find it odd and disagree.
If someone bullies people and uploads the videos for profit should that person be banned? Because that's the case here. Taking advantage of the non confrontational nature of someone to harass them is a valid reason to ban someone.
since when is being an asshole online a bannable offense. especially going outside to be an idiot and filming it? its just you doing obnoxious things, and there are laws against public neusaince but thats not at play here.
since.. always? moderation is the reason reddit/hn even exists. Nearly every online community is moderated in some way to kick out trolls and assholes, and the ones that don't quickly become like 4chan or voat.
From participating in a private online community that doesn't want people peeing in the pool? Sure. Harm done to Paul in exchange for others' benefit. Seems like an easy choice.
Yes it absolutely should. His behaviour was unconscionable, immoral, illegal and sets a terrible example for the young kids who largely make up his audience.
By allowing this content YouTube is defacto endorsing it which then encourages others to follow in his footsteps. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
You literally dont have to watch his content. why do people jump to bans to try and shut up poplar idiots. same goes for the most popular of idiots, Trump. I see frothing at the mouth when people mention banning him from twitter! whats the point???
I think because in their mind a ban is a nice line in the sand thing.
Never mind that a global platform like YouTube has an impossible tension of thousands of subcultures, countries, advertisers and other stakeholders to try and balance.
That’s the big mistake of these Web 2.0 platforms in my opinion - they try to be both a virally growing platform and a community but always wait until something bad happens before making the rules apparent. It’s an unresolvable problem in my opinion.
It's not about "not watching his content" he is clearly harassing people ( at least in the Japan videos ). Most communities ban people who commit abuse, this is no different.
because the money and views directly enable this negative behaviour? These people are free to be assholes all they want, but they shouldn't be funded by youtube.
Why death is so much taboo in Western world today? Why teenagers should forget about death and life risks? One climbing skyscrapers risks death, but rarely there is material to show and visually warn young brains how that may end up. Most bodies in that forrest had suits, possibly office workers, who knows maybe pushed into karoshi - that is the problem and warning too.
I am not sure if Mr Paul was disrespectful in the material, that wasn't covered by the article. But death is real, why to reject it? Why to not discuss it openly?
The issue isn't that Jake is confronting the issue of death itself, the issue is that he is effectively objectifying a physical, very recent suicide for his fans to oogle and oggle over and deliver a payload of clicks, irrespective of the identity of the victim or his family.
Eh, if I were Logan I'd (hopefully have enough of said millions I earned being a hooligan) take my money and retire with the ability to do whatever I want. He had a good run, maybe he can now go do something productive with his time and money.
I feel the outrage generation has had far too much say in how this has been handled.
Videos of death appear all the time across various platforms. The fact that he made a video featuring a corpse should not enough to warrant a ban I don't feel - rather an immediate setting to 'age restricted content' perhaps - but If we're banning youtubers over showing a corpse on the screen, then most news media outlets would need to shut up shop. I know some people "don't like to see death", but it is a part of life. Do we really need to make death a taboo subject?
Now, I know that it's not simply because he video taped a corpse. His response and handling of the situation is clearly the underlying factor, and to that I ask - what happened to the idea that people can apologise, learn from mistakes, rehabilitate their behaviour and improve as a result of it? He apologised and removed his video, which seems like a reasonable response.
We all (i.e. the greater internet consuming population) seem to be going down a path of extreme responses to events without offering any ability for fixing mistakes. As soon as someone does something that's perceived to be wrong, everyone flips out and makes outrageous statements in comments threads (and in fact, it doesn't seem to require a majority voice - just loud and persistent small groups). The media perpetuates these stories as people love to keep getting more and more outraged. And people start posting more outlandish and aggressive responses in order to garner their own 'likes' and responses which feeds the snowball effect.
It seems like as time rolls on, there's less and less margin for error that people are willing to accept. And if you anger the mob for any reason, your life and career is over. It's a big risk for anyone in the public light I feel, and I wonder if we'll reach a stage where content creators (actors, writers, vloggers, streamers, or whoever) will change how they see any value in their career if it could be immediately and permanently extinguished for minor reasoning.
Edit: That wasn't supposed to sound as ranty as it did, apologies.
Philip DeFranco has analysed this well and covered this in several videos, the latest being [1]. I agree with his analysis that the problem here is YT itself, not the content creators. I personally believe this latest development makes Logan Paul somewhat of a scapegoat, especially since his video apology [2] was one of the most sincere public apologies I've seen.
Why would he turn ads off if he was sincere? I don't really understand the relation.
I'd understand if you suggested that he donate the profits from the video to a suicide prevention charity or something similar. If I fuck up at work, I don't apologise and offer to work for free.
>Last year, YouTube dropped another one of its stars, Felix Kjellberg, better known by his YouTube alias PewDiePie, from its top-tier advertising after reports surfaced about anti-Semitic comments he made on video.
I generally really respect the NYT but to phrase the whole PewDiePie situation like this is utterly disgusting and a misguided narrative.
I think this was a way for Logan Paul to start his own streaming service.
I have to believe this was intentional so he could essentially force his audience to go some paid network he owns. I don't think it was as accidental as their making it seem.
Disney is trying to start their own streaming network as well.
because he was dumb enough to post it in the first place? and he didn't even get punished for it until the huge wave of backlash youtube received. hell it took them a week to bother making an announcement, like they were waiting and hoping it would die down instead of having to actually enforce their own rules.
I haven’t seen a single video by the guy, but the linked NYT article seems to imply it displayed gory details of someone who committed suicide recently. Would it be possible that such grisly scene would turn some teens (which were his main audience, from my understanding) off the topic of suicide? In a way that raw photos and videos of war atrocities horrify us but force us to introspect on the value of life and peace?
I watched it. It had a shot of the guy hanging from a tree with his face blurred out.
That's it. No gore. And they don't go close to the body. But do talk about it while staring in shock.
He talked a bit about suicide, and about being shocked to actually see a dead body. I didn't watch the whole thing (not really that interested in what he has to say), but the part I saw didn't seem like such a big deal to me. Maybe I'm missing something?
Is it the simple fact that they show a [partly blurred] dead body?
Something else?
(I hope I can actually ask this here. It seems like people are really sensitive about it, so I'm hoping not to get attacked for asking. But I really don't see what the big deal is.)
Quite the opposite. Reporting details of suicides has been proven to lead to an increase in attempts, and for attempts to be more successful. The Samaritans in the UK has good media guidelines on reporting of suicide: https://www.samaritans.org/media-centre/media-guidelines-rep...
I prefer the National Union of Journalist guidelines.
I frequently talk to reporters about the way they report suicide, and when I was using the Samaritans guidance journos would almost always say "but fredom of speech".
Giving them guidance written by other journalists (and then giving them the Samaritans guidance) stopped them saying that.
I don’t know what your threshold for gore is, but it was a man hanging by a rope around his neck from a tree. I’d never seen it in HD... just the famous historic “strange fruit” lynching photographs. It was confronting but not particularly gross in my opinion.
I agree with you that there might be the scratchings of an effective lesson there but sadly the edit of the video didn’t really do it.
Guys like Logan and PewDiePie are scaring away advertisers, and the kids who watch them would probably just switch and watch some other YouTuber instead if they were to go away.
Unfortunately there are an entire stable of Disney-funded Maker Studio-groomed content creators willing to make the same videos. YouTube talent truly is a dime a dozen.
If this is true then explain how YouTube has any talent left since they have almost all been universally bitching and moaning post-"Adpocalypse" and yet continue to use YouTube as their platform.
If it were so easy to move off of YouTube, these many "creators" would have already banded together to create something new, backed by VC funding based on their "star-power". But this hasn't happened.
Making a YouTube clone is easy, making a YouTube clone that isn't a sinkhole that just eats millions and millions of dollars is hard.
This has been a long time under way, and while I don’t particularly think they should drop shows like they stupidly did with Pewdiepie, there definitely had to be some backlash for posting a video of a dead guy, when they were striking against videoes talking about that video, for being in violation.
It’s also worth noting, that YouTube were not the ones taking down the video, Logan did this himself after the backlash, and that they waited so long is rather indicative of them trying to see where the wind blows and if they could get away with it.
Honestly, YT has been writing the book on “how to shit on your creators” for 2017 and more, but they might finally be setting back on a better track.